What are your favourite foley props? The items that make the coolest sounds, or are just essential to get the sound right? Tripods for zimmer frames, fish slices for sword schwings - what prop do you constantly turn to that always delivers the stand out sound?

4 Answers
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Obviously it depends on the movie. I had a foley artist help me for some rugby scenes on a movie, and he had with him a camouflage net. It came in handy for so many of the sounds I needed. From the netting, we got layers for grass, dirt, crunchy stuff, scraping, textured muffling, etc. This was combined with footsteps, balls landing, falls, thumps, scrapes etc. It really provided a lot of options for layering a sound with a certain type of ground. You can fold it up to create different thickness and dryness of foliage, you can also place the camouflage netting on a concrete slab to get great dirty scrapes or on your lap to create a more muffled thump with an earthy texture. Anyway, you get the point, very useful!

I have so many favorite props and am always trying to improve on the quality of the FX by experimenting. I recently used a bowling ball on gritty sand to make the sound of a dung beetle moving its dung ball imitating the perspective from that of a dog. Then I spiced it up by rubbing my hand (gloved) in circular motion in the dirt to get more of the ground. Lots of fun.